Spruiking the Coalition’s 2020 tax cuts; Australians’ ‘$200 billion’ war chest; Google’s experiments; free speech; and even a Liberal Party self-congratulatory piece on the NBN.
The stenographers were out in full force on Monday as Treasurer Josh Frydenberg spruiked the benefits of 2020’s tax cuts.
Jennifer Duke – at Fairfax – and Hamish Goodall – at 7News – must’ve gone to the same journalism school, as their opening paragraphs were incredibly similar.
Duke –The Sydney Morning Herald:
Goodall – 7News
It got better, though, with an entire paragraph repeated word for word.
The Sydney Morning Herald:
7News:
Reporting or just copying and pasting government drops?
Media outlets upload news at same time
It was the same deal on Friday, but this time the line was the “$200 billion war chest”, with media outlets the Australian Financial Review, News.com.au, The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and The Courier Mail uploading the news items between 10.30pm and 10.39pm. Extraordinary timing.
Australian Financial Review
News.com.au
The Australian
The Courier Mail
The Daily Telegraph
It’s hard to see the need for concern regarding Google’s experiments that have led to Australian media sites not appearing in the news.
If everyone is reporting the exact same story, the public only needs one source!
The Australian Financial Review
The Australian
Independent. Always… ?
Nine newspapers published on the same day four articles written by Liberal/Liberal-aligned backers.
The Australian Financial Review and The Age/Sydney Morning Herald ran pieces from Richard Alston (ex-Liberal Party senator; former party president); David Alexander (Liberal lobbyist); Paul Fletcher (Liberal Party frontbencher); and David Sharma (Liberal Party backbencher). And all articles steeped in ideology.
Richard Alston
The irony of an article about bias on a day when four Liberal Party articles appeared was overshadowed by Alston’s tripping over his ideology in trying to dismiss the ABC’s internal polling, which shows widespread support for the ABC.
“(Australians) may well do in regional and rural Australia … but in urban areas it is a different matter.” Yet Australian urbanites – the “inner-city lefties” to whom the ABC panders – also support the ABC? I’m confused.
David Alexander, head of lobbying firm
In going after Paul Keating, David Alexander seemed to repeatedly misrepresent the former Labor prime minister.
Despite extensive sleuthing, I could find no reference to “the best government in the world in the last 30 years”, even in Keating’s speech on Australia-China policy in 2019.
Furthermore, Alexander’s reference to “get[ting] hung up on the words democrat and democracy” was taken out of context when Keating was discussing China’s foreign policy in attempting to “democratise power” among countries in Africa, South America, and Brazil, China and India.
And the full quote regarding “nutters” is:
Over to you, readers.
Dave Sharma
Dave Sharma’s criticism of Twitter silencing Donald Trump appeared sycophantic and poorly reasoned in equal measure.
First, the idea that being banned from Twitter silences the voice of one of the world’s most powerful men seems almost laughable.
Further, Sharma compared climate change activism to attempts to incite insurrection.
Meanwhile, The Age’s editorial took the opposing stance:
And a ‘built and fully operational’ NBN
Finally, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher took the opportunity to spruik the NBN roll-out (once again).
Despite the Coalition government claiming last month that the NBN is “built and fully operational”, 35,000 premises remain unconnected, and a further 250,000 that cannot reach 25mbps – less than a quarter of what Kevin Rudd’s government proposed.
Michael Tanner is completing a Doctor of Medicine/Doctor of Philosophy. His writing explores the intersection of economics, the media and public health. His writing has also been published in The Age. Michael’s Twitter handle is @MichaelTanner_
Comments
17 responses to “Copying and pasting government drops?”
The cherished hallmark of democracy. Diversity of mainstream media. Thank God we are not like Chhinah
What I have been considering is the imbalance that may come from the banning of people and denial of service to other platforms. Is this a way for the dominant ones (Twatter, FarceBook, YouthTube) to strangle any smaller potential competitors using the – hate speech / fake news reasons?
We know that tech companies simply buy any startups and rivals, to either incorporate their ideas into the larger behemoth, or to strangle them with contracts, clauses and a ton of cash to the founders – starry eyed kids who think being bought by FarceBook or Amazenot is akin to success. Already, these tech giants are anti-competitive and too big for the healthy long term outcomes for society that a democracy should expect and strive for.
Denying a web server to RWNJ’s only forces them out of the light where we can watch them more easily, and into a dark realm, where they can be ill-intentioned with less oversight or valid criticism. Remember, before the Internet, there were ways of organising groups and planning action… telephones, pen and paper, face-to-face and handouts / flyers are still valid. Would you rather be able to see what they are up to, or just wonder about them until it goes pear shaped?
Good points.
Excellent work, Michael. It’s little wonder that journalists are often facetiously (but correctly, I’d say) called ‘churnalists’. Because that’s all they do these days, churn media releases. Any reporting in the mainstream media, including the ABC, of the Google v. News Corp/Nine war is coloured by vested interest.
I don’t care for Dave Sharma, but it is certainly true that Twitter banning Trump has been used as a precedent for censoring other accounts, including anti-war, Leftist accounts. The same is true on Youtube and Facebook.
It’s not a difficult ploy to untangle, if you pay attention: Censor somebody prominent who a lot of people don’t like and will agree with censoring, and make a big noise about doing so. Then, in the following weeks and months, quietly shadowban, freeze, or delete other accounts. It happened with Facebook and Alex Jones – after he was banned and Facebook advertised the fact, thousands of accounts were deleted with no explanation or no valid explanation – and now it’s happened with Twitter and Donald Trump.
People really should engage with the reasoning behind the free speech principle, rather than gloating over somebody loudmouth and nasty being censored.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘used as a precedent’, but then I don’t follow what’s going on in Twitterland, except what’s reported elsewhere. Wikipedia, for example says
Twitter said that between mid-2015 and February 2016 it had suspended 125,000 accounts associated with ISIL and related organizations, and by August 2016 had suspended some 360,000 accounts for being associated with terrorism (not all these were ISIL-related)
at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions
Trump’s hardly a ‘precedent’ as you point out in the second paragraph. Did you perhaps mean ‘pretext’? If the Trump ban has occasioned a whole lot of other bans including ‘anti-war’ and ‘leftist’ accounts, can you give some examples?
It only Trump were merely ‘loudmouth and nasty’ – as has been readily and unpleasantly apparent nearly every day for the last four years in the mainstream media – rather than inciting violence, which one assumes to have been the ostensible reason for all those banned accounts in the Wiki quote, as well as Trump’s banning. Frankly, I don’t care for Twitter and Facebook, and have nothing to do with either, so I’m certainly not gloating. I fully accept that those organisations could be terribly biased, inconsistent and opaque in their account removal processes. Trump behaved as if immune, and he seems to have been right about that for a long time. But I doubt Twitter and Facebook are worse than the ‘censors’ at News Corp.
I’ve tried to ‘engage with the reasoning behind free speech’ and concluded that absolute free speech is undesirable if not inconceivable in our society, and that it’s just humbug when invoked by conservatives, who only want it for themselves. See Craig Kelly for example, who removes dissenting voices from his website/Facebook or whatever it is; the ‘free speech’ is all his. Reasoning leads to a notion of free speech which can be accepted and used by reasonable people.
Fair enough – I used the word ‘precedent’ lazily, when what I really meant was that banning or otherwise censoring a prominent social media account belonging to someone obnoxious tends to be followed by various kinds of censorship or deletion of accounts which cannot be justified (even if you accept that the first account should have been banned). It seems to work because people associate any reports of censorship/banning with the first ban – that dominates news and discussion.
Re what Wikipedia says that Twitter says – there is no reason to believe that either source is honest or accurate. Re banning Trump: if he broke the law by inciting violence, then that should be dealt with transparently by the legal system, not arbitrarily by a multinational corporation.
No doubt absolute free speech is unattainable in our society – but if we don’t make a constant effort to maintain what free speech is practicable, the alternative is much, much worse. As for Craig Kelly removing dissenting voices from his page – he, at least, is not a tech corporation which controls one of the few ways for ordinary people to reach a global audience. Facebook, Twitter etc are in the private sector, but their platforms are rather like utilities, and like a private sector supplier of water, electricity, or internet, should not be allowed to arbitrarily decide who has access and who doesn’t.
Now, your last statement: “Reasoning leads to a notion of free speech which can be accepted and used by reasonable people.” Who, please, decides who is reasonable and which speech is reasonable? Is it you? Government? Twitter and Facebook? The majority in a society? I hope I don’t need to point out the problem with any of those as the arbiter of what is “reasonable” or “true”.
Good article. It is almost exhausting and borders on nauseating to read such utter drivel from a bunch of ideological nincompoops. As has become pathological behaviour for conservatives, we are are free to say whatever they want us to say and free to believe whatever view of the world they are presently promoting – and they are free to promote their latest fictional accounts. But for all of the guff, drivel and self-promotion, the mainstream media fell right in behind, so but for the few who read Crikey, the Guardian or John Menadue, the lack of substance and of facts gets no attention at all. Since the majority are not able or willing to seek out “the facts”, they simply buy into this media tosh. I might decide to search for Keating’s speeches and see for myself what he said, but the typical person is more than happy to form what they see as their “knowledge” based on the opinions of the uninformed, so the technique of a drivel bombardment is, as we know, something that immensely irritates a few, but becomes the truth for many.
Worse still is the lack of consequences for those who claim to practice professional journalism in what was once called the ‘Fourth Estate’, because it was meant to form a critical pillar of democracy. Today, anyone can lie with impunity and profit from it. Indeed the awful thing that is Donald Trump has been allowed to build his ‘successful’ career and fortune on a seventy year long dung-heap of lies.
We need a ‘Truth Commission’ in the media, to go hand in hand with the Federal Corruption Commission. Since when was ‘freedom of speech’ synonymous with ‘freedom to deceive’?
Since when was 'freedom of speech' synonymous with 'freedom to deceive'?Pretty much since newspapers were invented, I should think. Seriously, though, the idea of a “Truth Commission” is Orwellian. Do you really imagine it would not be co-opted by government or other powerful interests?
I can only hope that it would be protected from the outset by ‘arm’s length’ legislation and incorporated in the constitution, so, like an anti-corruption commission, it could not be ‘co-opted’ by any sitting government without reference to the High Court.
I don’t accept your cynical assertion that freedom of speech isn’t a meaningful element of a democratic nation’s constitution. We don’t have a Bill of Rights, and we should aim to get one. Recent events in the US would suggest that we are living in an era of the rapid erosion of democracy. We can tut-tut, or complain, or we can act, decisively as our ancestors did when they forced democracy down the throats of their ‘masters’.
(The violent language is not hyperbole, it is a measured response to the kind of challenge we now face.)
You misread me: I would very much like to see free speech enshrined in our constitution – without hindrance or let. My problem is with a “Truth Commission”. Just about any statement is open to interpretation, misinterpretation, or dispute, and the idea of having some authority telling us not only what to believe, but what we can say, is Orwellian.
May be of interest – NA’AMOD: “British Jews Against Occupation” https://naamod.org.uk/
and:
“Jews for Justice for Palestinians”: https://jfjfp.com/
Our newsrooms have largely been stripped of staff so it is hardly surprising that few have the time to do little more than parrot news releases. It means of course that the political narrative is largely stripped of analytical content – those who are interested in intelligent and insightful reporting desert the mastheads with result that public discourse is impoverished.
yes that is why the ABC was destroyed and rebuilt as a weather station, I remeber the great shows that had with REAL reporting.
How ironic is it that our former Ambassador to the State of Israel continually sprouts free speech for the right wingers but is notoriously silent on the oppressive actions of the State of Israel towards the discriminated and impoverished people of Palestine. No words of support for the Two State Policy and the many UN Resolutions and silencer when confronted with the terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946. And let us not forget his submissive role in Scomo’s ill conceived intention during the election campaign to move our embassy to Jerusalem. Silence of the lambs.
No accusations by Sharma of holocaust deniers being denied free speech, or of Trump supporters wearing T-shirts reading “6MWE” (Six Million Weren’t Enough?, a reference to the Holocaust.